Temperatures Rise Over 100, I Make a Curry

Red Peanut Curry with Chicken

It is unbelievably hot today. Like over 100 degrees, and I never realized I'd miss air conditioning so much. But that wasn't going to stop me from eating well- no! I had cracked open a coconut the other day, and had the time of my life laboriously peeling bark off every stupid chunk. Coconuts are delicious, but they're a lot of work. Anyway, after I finished prepping a whole coconut I realized that I only needed a small bit to go with my frozen yogurt. That left me with a full two cups of shaved coconut and a cup of coconut milk (not coconut water). So, at the kind suggestion of my awesome chef cousin, I made a curry!

It may have been extremely hot in my apartment, but spicy curry and a glass of icy fruit juice really cooled me down. This curry was pretty easy to make. It started with scallions, ginger, and garlic fried in some vegetable oil. Following them came red curry paste, then a generous serving of peanut butter, a little sugar, soy sauce, pepper, chili oil and lime juice. To make it into more of a sauce, my freshly made coconut milk was added, along with around 3/4 cup of chicken stock. Finally, as the sauce/curry was reducing at a simmer, I added the chicken, which had been cut up in small pieces.

Funny story about the chicken, actually. In my exhausted, I-just-commuted-home-in-100-degree-heat-in-my-shitty-car-without-air-conditioning state, I picked up the wrong package of chicken off the supermarket shelf. As I sweated in the kitchen hoping to make a semi-quick dinner, I soon realized that I actually bought drumsticks. So, I took a serrated knife and cut them up. Turns out, drumsticks have a lot of connective tissue, and are really slippery and hard to cut up. However, they are dark meat, and thus have more flavor. It was pretty worth it in the end. Each chicken piece had its own flavor in addition to the amazing curry. Yum!

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Red-Curry-Peanut-Sauce-359773